Vote by mail ballots are commonly used in elections as part of the absentee voting process. Typically voters who expect to be absent from their polling on election day, or expect to be unable to reach their polling place for other reasons may request to vote by mail. In addition, some jurisdictions permit, or even encourage, voters to vote by mail by establishing a permanent vote by mail status. Individuals who have requested to vote by mail are typically mailed a ballot in advance of the election. The voter will mark the ballot, insert it in a special return envelope, sign the outside of the envelope, and mail it back to a central location to be tallied.
Management of voting by mail is a complex, costly, and labor intensive process. Each voting jurisdiction prepares numerous ballot types for each election in order to present each voter with the particular subset of issues and candidates that are associated with that voter's particular state, county, city, school district, road district, party, or other categories. For each mail ballot requested, the individual must be identified as a registered voter by consulting the voter registration database to determine if the individual is a registered voter. Once an individual is identified as a registered voter, the voter must then be associated with, and sent, the correct ballot for that particular voter based on address, party affiliation, and other characteristics.
Isolated portions of this process are currently automated, such as printing mailing labels for mail ballots. Much of it, however, remains labor intensive manual work, including identifying absentee voter status and required ballot, affixing the labels to the envelopes, selecting and inserting and sealing the correct ballot in the envelope, and organizing the outgoing envelopes in trays for delivery to the post office. Because mail ballots are not necessarily requested and printed in the optimum order for mailing, voting jurisdictions currently cannot generally take advantage of reduced rates which are available for specially sorted mail.
Once the ballots have been mailed to absentee voters, a number of things may happen to the ballots. For the most part, the proper absentee voter will receive and cast one mail-in ballot. Occasionally a voter will misplace his or her first ballot, request a second one, and inadvertently mail back both. Similarly, a voter may request and mail back an absentee ballot, forget that he or she had done so, and vote at the polling place as well. In other instances individuals interested in stuffing the ballot box may deliberately request duplicate ballots or intercept, vote, and return absentee ballots that were not intended for them. Because not every returned ballot is eligible to be cast, once the ballot is marked and returned, the ballot envelope must be verified as associated with a unique registered voter who has not yet voted.
Currently when ballots return for counting they are either associated with a particular voter by visually checking the voter number and comparing it with the data in the voter registration database, or if the envelope contains a barcode it may be identified and associated with a particular voter by scanning the barcode with a hand held barcode reader. Attempts to automate this process have generally been unsuccessful because of the difficulties associated with automated scanning and processing of the envelopes. Even in a single voting jurisdiction, ballots may vary considerably in size because of precinct issues or candidates, creating return ballot envelopes of varying thicknesses. It has generally been impossible to automate the processing without requiring the user to specially sort the envelopes by thickness, and to make adjustments to the scanning hardware between processing stacks of returned ballot envelopes of different thicknesses. Even when manual presorting and hardware adjustment is done, currently existing technology does not permit the automated sorting of ballot envelopes into separate stacks of accepted and rejected ballot envelopes based automated verification that the envelope returned corresponds to one requested by an individual voting by mail. Even though there are mail sorting devices available for massive, relatively permanent sorting facilities, such large expensive immobile technology has not been adaptable for use in small occasional sorting operations such as required for processing ballot envelopes a few times a year.
Once the registered voter associated with a particular envelope has been identified, the voter's signature on the envelope must be compared with the voter's signature on file in order to ensure that the ballot was not inadvertently or deliberately cast by an individual other than the registered voter. Currently, this is done for each voter by visually comparing the signature on the ballot envelope either with a paper exemplar or an electronic one that may be selected manually and displayed on a computer screen.
Another difficulty arises when two ballot envelopes are apparently returned by the same voter. In the processes currently available, it is very difficult to track where an individual ballot envelope is stored once it has been identified as associated with a particular voter. In the event that a second apparently legitimate ballot envelope is returned by the same voter, or the voter appears at the polls to vote, election workers need to be able to retrieve the initial ballot envelope for review and resolution of the conflict. Under the current manual system, it is difficult to locate the previously received ballot once it has passed the initial review.
In addition, the mail ballot processing system comprises a series of isolated tasks. There is currently no integrated method of following the process from start to finish to ensure continuity, thoroughness, and timely completion.
Thus, there is a need for an integrated system for the management of vote by mail voting which reduces the labor and associated costs by interfacing with the existing voter registration database; automating the preparation, mailing, and return verification process; and by creating an integrated record of the absentee ballot from voter request to verified return.